Allan Massie is a Scottish writer who has published nearly 30 books, including a sequence of novels set in ancient Rome. His non-fiction works range from a study of Byron's travels to a celebration of Scottish rugby. He has been a political columnist for The Scotsman, The Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph and writes a literary column for The Spectator.

Will this bitchy review of John le Carré's new novel lead to a war of words?

John Le Carré at home in Cornwall (Photo by Jonathan Player / Rex Features)

Anyone who still enjoys the old-fashioned pleasure of an elegantly bitchy book review should turn to last week’s TLS where they will find Frederic Raphael putting a Rosa Klebb-style boot into John le Carré's new novel, A Delicate Truth. He questions the Great Man’s dialogue and syntax, and, worse still, the credibility of a central feature of the plot which has a British diplomat assigned to a supervisory role in an illegal enterprise. “My own contacts in MI6,” Mr Raphael says, modestly, “are meagre, but I am promised, with some vigour, by a veteran ‘with very British features’ that no straight diplomat would have been deputed to officiate on such a mission – which must show how little your average old hand knows (or tells) about what really, really now goes on.”

This is an admirable piece of one-upmanship, a game at which Mr Raphael has always been in the gold medal class. The words in quotes – “very British features” – are applied by le Carré to his own middle-ranking Foreign Office man. One would like to know who Mr Raphael’s British-featured veteran is, but no doubt he passed on this information in confidence, and Mr Raphael is to be applauded for declining to reveal the identity of his source.

Far be it from me to suggest that Mr Raphael’s sharp treatment of A Delicate Truth is prompted by anything but critical disapproval. His standards have always been high. Those of us who delight in his Journals or Notebooks, a number of which have been published by Carcanet, know with what relish he lays about his inferiors. He never lets you forget that he is a Classical scholar and successful novelist and Oscar-winning scriptwriter. Anyone who supposes that envy enters into his dismissive treatment of le Carré is surely mistaken, even if he should seek to justify this suspicion by remarking that Mr Raphael’s own smoothie-smart middlebrow novels don’t quite live up to the lofty standards by which their author judges others, and that their relentlessly clever repartee tends to become a touch wearisome.

Be that as it may, I rather hope John le Carré hits back. A battle of words between these two vigorous octogenarians would be a treat.